"Dry up, Papa," said Case. "'Tain't you that's to marry her. I
guess you're not her godfather and godmother. I guess Mr.
Wiltshire's going to please himself."

With that he made an excuse to me that he must move about the
marriage, and left me alone with the poor wretch that was his
partner and (to speak truth) his gull. Trade and station belonged
both to Randall; Case and the negro were parasites; they crawled
and fed upon him like the flies, he none the wiser. Indeed, I have
no harm to say of Billy Randall beyond the fact that my gorge rose
at him, and the time I now passed in his company was like a
nightmare.

The room was stifling hot and full of flies; for the house was
dirty and low and small, and stood in a bad place, behind the
village, in the borders of the bush, and sheltered from the trade.
The three men's beds were on the floor, and a litter of pans and
dishes. There was no standing furniture; Randall, when he was
violent, tearing it to laths. There I sat and had a meal which was
served us by Case's wife; and there I was entertained all day by
that remains of man, his tongue stumbling among low old jokes and
long old stories, and his own wheezy laughter always ready, so that
he had no sense of my depression. He was nipping gin all the
while. Sometimes he fell asleep, and awoke again, whimpering and
shivering, and every now and again he would ask me why I wanted to
marry Uma. "My friend," I was telling myself all day, "you must
not come to be an old gentleman like this."

It might be four in the afternoon, perhaps, when the back door was
thrust slowly open, and a strange old native woman crawled into the
house almost on her belly. She was swathed in black stuff to her
heels; her hair was grey in swatches; her face was tattooed, which
was not the practice in that island; her eyes big and bright and
crazy. These she fixed upon me with a rapt expression that I saw
to be part acting. She said no plain word, but smacked and mumbled
with her lips, and hummed aloud, like a child over its Christmas
pudding. She came straight across the house, heading for me, and,
as soon as she was alongside, caught up my hand and purred and
crooned over it like a great cat. From this she slipped into a
kind of song.

"Who the devil's this?" cried I, for the thing startled me.

"It's Fa'avao," says Randall; and I saw he had hitched along the
floor into the farthest corner.

"You ain't afraid of her?" I cried.

"Me 'fraid!" cried the captain. "My dear friend, I defy her! I
don't let her put her foot in here, only I suppose 's different to-
day, for the marriage. 's Uma's mother."

"Well, suppose it is; what's she carrying on about?" I asked, more
irritated, perhaps more frightened, than I cared to show; and the
captain told me she was making up a quantity of poetry in my praise
because I was to marry Uma. "All right, old lady," says I, with
rather a failure of a laugh, "anything to oblige. But when you're
done with my hand, you might let me know."

She did as though she understood; the song rose into a cry, and
stopped; the woman crouched out of the house the same way that she
came in, and must have plunged straight into the bush, for when I
followed her to the door she had already vanished.

"These are rum manners," said I.

"'s a rum crowd," said the captain, and, to my surprise, he made
the sign of the cross on his bare bosom.